My Inspirations

Those things that inspire me most. Books, Authors, Movies, TV shows, all in all the things that inspire me have one thing in common and it’s the same thing that everyone keeps in common with what inspires them: It moves me.

Something about whatever it is, is so BIG, so new, so clever, so beautiful, so intriguing that it MOVES me.

Terry Brooks – Landover Series, Word & Void Series (Ha! Can you believe it? I’ve never read any Shannara? It would be next on my list except my roommate is cursed. Everytime someone near her tries to read it, something bad happens to her)

Melanie Rawn – Exiles Series (again, I’ve not read her major works. I’ve got a major TBR pile)

Irene Radford – Merlin’s Descendants series

Josie Litton – entire Viking/Akoran based collection

Anne Rice – How could I forget the incomparable Anne Rice? Specifically the Lasher/Taltos series, but Servant of the Bones was also a particular favorite.

Specific books that have inspired me:

Les Miserables – an amazingly LONG read, but so full of humanity.

Dune – Truly inspirational for depth and breadth of world building and politics.

Jane Eyre – This is my Personal Favorite book. I’ve read it so many times I can’t count. The subtleties, the wild emotion hidden in such delicate prose is so beautiful to me.

Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility – These are two completely different reads and yet I place them here, together, as I always read them together to remind me of PACE.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula – The original manuscript is nothing of the lusty movie sadist we see on the big screen and Mina is the redhead, which makes SO much more sense to me. ;) Being a redhead myself.

Night Magic by Charlotte Vale Allen – This is slightly obscure and yet is second only to Jane Eyre as my favorite novel. It takes the traditional Beauty and the Beast story, combines it with the romantic version of Phantom of the Opera and gives you a 20 year epic tale of love’s truth between two people who need each other.

Rape of the APE (American Puritan Ethic) by Allan Sherman – I don’t even know if this is still in publication (just checked and YES IT IS!!!) but it was a cornerstone for teaching me freedom of speech in writing. It’s main premise is to understand how the American Sexual Revolution came about, but it’s so much more than that. There’s an entire chapter where the author only types the word “fuck”. That’s it. 300+ times. Just to lose the anathema of the word. It’s an acronym after all, so why should we be afraid of it? Fornication Under Consent of the King. (Some say For Under Carnal Knowledge but that’s hogwash.)

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell– Yes, I’m from Georgia and no it’s NOT required reading. Most people here have never read it and never want to, it’s too damned long. I read it because I’d seen the movie and that was a habit of mine when I was a teenager, to find faults in movies made from books. I was never so angry in my life as I was when India and Melly were hiding from Scarlett that the men were out hunting the freed slaves that attacked her. I should have been offended that the men had been out hunting the slaves in the first place but Ms Mitchell wrote her passage so well that Scarlett’s anger SPARKED off the page and angered me right along with it! That’s the mark of a truly talented author!

Nausicaa – One of Miyazaki’s masterpieces, and the first I ever saw, this movie haunted me from when I was a child. It was my first anime and to this day remains my favorite.

Princess Mononoke – another Miyazaki. I love the forest spirits with their little rocking heads! The story itself is beautiful but the imagery is stunning.

9 – Tim Burton did a good thing when he produced this. I know it wasn’t “his”, and the guy who thought of this is a genius. My only problem is 7’s helmet. I used to have nightmares of sweeping up thousands of birdskulls, so seeing one on screen was a little weird to me.

Beetlejuice – Totally crass and it took me years to realize how much this really did influence me. From the CR McIntosh furniture to the off-kilter doors and funky clothes, this was a gothic dream as far as set design. I think the biggest influence I received from it was an irreverent way to look at the dimensions between life and death and who can and can’t see it.

Avatar – duh. who hasn’t been influenced by this?

Avatar the Last Airbender (cartoon NOT movie) – If you can find it (Target is a likely location) I highly recommend both for adults and children. The cartoon makes SO MUCH MORE SENSE than the poor direction of the movie. You will find yourself poring through the episodes a disc at a time, desperate to find what happens next. I invite you to respite at Lake Laogai. ;)

Transformers: Armada – This is above and beyond my favorite incarnation of the Transformers world. There are those of you who will agree and those who will disagree, so be it :) My favorite part of this is Starscream’s character arc. They took a normally petulant, whiny prat and gave him motive, reason, definition. He was moved as a pawn and then all of a sudden revealed himself as a knight to be sacrificed. Boring for the first 50 episodes or so, but after that, AMAZING.

Transformers 2007 – This movie is what started me writing Crescendo Oronis. CO actually, as some of you may already know, started life as a fanfiction named Prime’s Number. It’s still up at fanfiction.net. The story has changed so very drastically, I have no problem keeping that up and working on CO at the same time. Very few elements remained. Except some of the scromping. And the stickfight. I had to keep the stickfight. :D

Dark Crystal – Henson and Froud, need I say more?

Labyrinth – really, anything Jim Henson and Brian Froud collaborated on. I mean, how could it NOT inspire?

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